Okay, so what've we got? Drawing from Civ.com and Eurogamer.
Environmental Effects
AKA natural disasters (called it!). Eurogamer quotes Ed Beach saying there are five options on the 'natural disaster setting', ranging from Minimal to Hyper-Real. Examples discussed are:
-Floods, of three different severity levels. These include both explicit Floodplains, but also Grassland and Plains flat tiles next to rivers. They can flood (duh), damaging improvements, districts, and units on the tiles - and yes, that includes the city centre. Beach talks about how it was "kind of fun" to have a city he was sieging be hit by a flood, making it easier for him to conquer.
Which... instantly tells you that floods, and therefore natural disasters as a whole, are a no-go for multiplayer. Losing a city purely to the RNG is ridiculous.
Once the water recedes, flooded tiles receive a (temporary?) fertility bonus; basically your Nile setup. If you don't fancy being flooded, there's a Dam district which can reduce the impact (and acts as an amenity/housing boost, and later an electricity source); weirdly, it's shown downriver of the city centre in their example image, so I guess it doesn't function according to the laws of physics.
-Volcanoes. They go on a bit about how they've updated the map generator to put Mountain ranges along continent boundaries, along with Volcanoes and Geothermal Fissures; given that most of my games start by walking two steps and getting the 'new continent!' popup, that's actually a significant change. They seem to be indicating that the Natural Wonder volcanoes will function as superpowered volcanoes.
A volcano acts the same as a flood: it erupts, damages adjacent tiles, and boosts their fertility. The first picture on both articles shows what looks like a Natural Wonder volcano surrounded by ash. (It also shows 2 volcanoes only a tile apart - yikes!) Given that you can't dam it, I suspect these will be fairly heavy no-go areas.
They mention at this point that features ('river, volcano, mountain range, or desert') are named on discovery, with a name appropriate to the discoverer. That's a feature I remember from FreeCol, so I assume it was in at least one of the official Colonisation games. Cute, but not exactly useful.
-Storms. Four different types! Hurricanes from the sea (that can sink ships), dust storms from the desert (that can do something to cities), blizzards from tundra (that can do something to land units), and... a fourth one. No images of what this actually looks like. Dust storms and hurricanes add (say it with me) fertility to affected tiles.
Tied in with storms are droughts, which are namedropped but not otherwise described. They could be the fourth storm type, or they could be something separate. I assume they hit your yields. No images seem to show any of these, so I've got a sneaky suspicion they haven't yet worked out how to make them look good.
Basically, storms are the Roving RNG Effect. Fun in single player, murder in MP.
-Global warming, which increases chances of floods and storms, makes sea levels rise (presumably by random deletion of coastal tiles), and melts the tundra. No word on whether it also causes desertification. It's increased by using coal and oil, and halted by converting to geothermal (they mentioned fissures along mountain ranges), wind, solar, 'and more'. The 'more' is probably just the hydroelectric. Wind farms are initially on land, but later can be built offshore.
Which sounds... kind of interesting? It's a certain level of fiddly make-work, but micromanagement is sort of the name of the game. I can see potential for weaponising it against a coastal opponent in MP - except you won't want natural disasters turned on for MP anyway.
In SP, I have to wonder whether the AI understands the concept at all. Will they convert away from coal and oil? If so, does that mean it's effectively impossible to have major global warming? If so... why bother putting it in? Or will they not convert until you bully them into it, in which case either everything floods, or you burn all the 'diplomatic favour' you've been saving for a victory vote.
Conclusion: SP-only headline feature, and I suspect part of the reason for it is to shake things up so the AI has a chance of achieving something. 'AI can never take cities' is going to be less obvious when random floods/storms/volcanoes do half the job for them.
Power & Consumable Resources
This isn't made very clear. Electricity is needed to boost some late-game buildings, and Coal, Oil, and Uranium can be 'burned for fuel' - but does that mean you use up the resource? If so, how much electricity would that provide? My guess is that burning one Strategic Resource will provide a permanent boost for a single city/Industrial Zone, but they don't really say.
Conclusion: Already covered under Global Warming. The tradeoffs are potentially interesting, and at least it feels more real than juggling paintings in museums.
Engineering Projects
This is very much a catch-all term, with multiple non-related things under it. Most of them, though, seem to be the same kind of 'repeatable district' as the neighbourhood:
-Canals, which allow ships to cross land. Multiple types here! Firstly the graphic: a city on a 1-tile isthmus will have a canal graphic added. Then there's the Canal district, which you can have multiple of in a city, and have them all connect up. Well, I say 'all'... they kind of imply you can only have two, and they have to be opposite each other around the city centre.
There's a Panama Canal wonder, which sounds like it's basically a place-anywhere canal district. The picture in both articles looks like it shows a 3-tile canal, being city centre - canal district - Panama (with a ship graphic in it). So the only way to make a canal more than 4 long is to have 2 cities with 3 tiles between them, and join them up with Panama.
-Dams. We already discussed dams back in Floods.
-Mountain Tunnels. No image of this, but pretty obviously it's a way to make a mountain passable. I would guess they're the same type of repeatable district, because the alternative is letting builders walk onto mountains, which would kind of ruin the point.
-Railways. Railways! These are shown running both inside and between cities, and definitely overlay on top of improvements. They look like they might be straight Road replacements, since I don't see any roads in the image that includes them. So probably not that exciting.
-Flood Barriers. Described as a 'new technology', but no word on whether it's something you actually build, an improvement to your dam, or a policy to put in place.
Conclusion: Sounds interesting! A lot of this is focussed on making moving armies around easier, which is a conscious effort to alleviate some of the complaints about movement.
World Congress
Non-functional in multiplayer, since your opponent won't care how many Diplomatic Cookies or whatever you have. They've moved the Emergencies system from R&F over here, and added a Diplo Victory: it basically consists of garnering points from victory votes and things like the World Games, the World Fair, and other competitions such as Disaster Relief (because that's really sensitive naming!).
You get Diplomatic Favour throughout the game, which you can use to influence the AI's votes. These include in Emergencies (when you don't want to do the stupid thing they're clamouring for), and on standard resolutions a la Civ 5.
Most interestingly, they've revamped Warmongering! Now it's Grievances, described as 'a tug-of-war between a pair of players'. That means that if you get attacked, the AIs will recognise that you've been wronged, and won't start hating you until they feel you've overstepped yourself in revenge.
Conclusion: The World Congress is hardly unexpected, and kind of take-or-leave. But the Grievances update sounds like it could make warfare actually viable without immediately descending into Everybody Hates Everybody territory.
Future Tech/Civics
Not much discussed, but they do mention (and show) the Seastead, which I guess is a water-based Neighbourhood. They also meantion carbon-capture tech, which sounds like a 'turn off Global Warming' switch to me.
One thing which sounds kinda fun is that the structure of the Future Tech trees is randomised at the start of the game. The big question is, is it randomised the same for all players? I'd hope so, but they don't say.
One thing they do say is that they've tried to make all the Victory Conditions take an extra 30-40 turns, so they all happen in the Future Era. Er... does that just mean 'we've made combat harder'? Because I can't see any other way to slow down the Domination victory.
Conclusion: I love me some Future Tech, but if they've made combat harder the AIs are going to be so utterly pointless.
New Leaders
8 civs, 9 leaders, including 'some fan favorites – with brand new twists'. I suspect the ninth leader will be for an existing civ, but not based on anything - just a hunch. As Japper says, Polynesia and the Inca show up in the trailer. They mention that some of them have interactions with the Global Warming & World Congress features, so I guess there's something about Polynesian islands in there.
New Scenarios
I'm... sure there are lots of people out there who play scenarios.
Other Content
"Seven new world wonders, seven natural wonders, 18 new units, 15 new improvements, 9 new buildings, 5 new districts, 2 new city sets, 9 new techs and 10 new civics have been added." A lot of this has already been covered: the techs and civics are probably Future Era, we've mentioned at least four districts, and the new civs bring a dose of everything with them. But hey, new wonders, that's always fun.
Improved Gameplay Systems
They've added stuff to espionage (it's going to be Steal DiploCookies, isn't it?), revamped Science and Culture victories (which suggests they haven't changed combat - phew!), added new Historic Moments (er... I don't know R&F), and 'some other stuff'. I guess that's... fine?
Overall thoughts
This is a heavily Single Player expansion - too much randomness for most of the systems to work in MP. But given that they just released the game for a console without online MP at all, I think we all knew that's where their focus lies.
I think the changes will open up a lot of variation in games - and dare one say it, variants? Something like 'play as Egypt, plant cities only on river banks, never build flood controls' could be interesting, as could a passive-aggressive 'your score is based on the number of grievances you have towards everyone else combined, minus any grievances they have against you'.
I don't know how it'll interact with R&F, but there's a definite possibility of 'oh gods NOW what' moments, when you get hit with a joint war declaration, in a dark age, while recovering from a flood, while a storm is coming down from the north, and hey, isn't the local volcano looking restless...?
hS
Environmental Effects
AKA natural disasters (called it!). Eurogamer quotes Ed Beach saying there are five options on the 'natural disaster setting', ranging from Minimal to Hyper-Real. Examples discussed are:
-Floods, of three different severity levels. These include both explicit Floodplains, but also Grassland and Plains flat tiles next to rivers. They can flood (duh), damaging improvements, districts, and units on the tiles - and yes, that includes the city centre. Beach talks about how it was "kind of fun" to have a city he was sieging be hit by a flood, making it easier for him to conquer.
Which... instantly tells you that floods, and therefore natural disasters as a whole, are a no-go for multiplayer. Losing a city purely to the RNG is ridiculous.
Once the water recedes, flooded tiles receive a (temporary?) fertility bonus; basically your Nile setup. If you don't fancy being flooded, there's a Dam district which can reduce the impact (and acts as an amenity/housing boost, and later an electricity source); weirdly, it's shown downriver of the city centre in their example image, so I guess it doesn't function according to the laws of physics.
-Volcanoes. They go on a bit about how they've updated the map generator to put Mountain ranges along continent boundaries, along with Volcanoes and Geothermal Fissures; given that most of my games start by walking two steps and getting the 'new continent!' popup, that's actually a significant change. They seem to be indicating that the Natural Wonder volcanoes will function as superpowered volcanoes.
A volcano acts the same as a flood: it erupts, damages adjacent tiles, and boosts their fertility. The first picture on both articles shows what looks like a Natural Wonder volcano surrounded by ash. (It also shows 2 volcanoes only a tile apart - yikes!) Given that you can't dam it, I suspect these will be fairly heavy no-go areas.
They mention at this point that features ('river, volcano, mountain range, or desert') are named on discovery, with a name appropriate to the discoverer. That's a feature I remember from FreeCol, so I assume it was in at least one of the official Colonisation games. Cute, but not exactly useful.
-Storms. Four different types! Hurricanes from the sea (that can sink ships), dust storms from the desert (that can do something to cities), blizzards from tundra (that can do something to land units), and... a fourth one. No images of what this actually looks like. Dust storms and hurricanes add (say it with me) fertility to affected tiles.
Tied in with storms are droughts, which are namedropped but not otherwise described. They could be the fourth storm type, or they could be something separate. I assume they hit your yields. No images seem to show any of these, so I've got a sneaky suspicion they haven't yet worked out how to make them look good.
Basically, storms are the Roving RNG Effect. Fun in single player, murder in MP.
-Global warming, which increases chances of floods and storms, makes sea levels rise (presumably by random deletion of coastal tiles), and melts the tundra. No word on whether it also causes desertification. It's increased by using coal and oil, and halted by converting to geothermal (they mentioned fissures along mountain ranges), wind, solar, 'and more'. The 'more' is probably just the hydroelectric. Wind farms are initially on land, but later can be built offshore.
Which sounds... kind of interesting? It's a certain level of fiddly make-work, but micromanagement is sort of the name of the game. I can see potential for weaponising it against a coastal opponent in MP - except you won't want natural disasters turned on for MP anyway.
In SP, I have to wonder whether the AI understands the concept at all. Will they convert away from coal and oil? If so, does that mean it's effectively impossible to have major global warming? If so... why bother putting it in? Or will they not convert until you bully them into it, in which case either everything floods, or you burn all the 'diplomatic favour' you've been saving for a victory vote.
Conclusion: SP-only headline feature, and I suspect part of the reason for it is to shake things up so the AI has a chance of achieving something. 'AI can never take cities' is going to be less obvious when random floods/storms/volcanoes do half the job for them.
Power & Consumable Resources
This isn't made very clear. Electricity is needed to boost some late-game buildings, and Coal, Oil, and Uranium can be 'burned for fuel' - but does that mean you use up the resource? If so, how much electricity would that provide? My guess is that burning one Strategic Resource will provide a permanent boost for a single city/Industrial Zone, but they don't really say.
Conclusion: Already covered under Global Warming. The tradeoffs are potentially interesting, and at least it feels more real than juggling paintings in museums.
Engineering Projects
This is very much a catch-all term, with multiple non-related things under it. Most of them, though, seem to be the same kind of 'repeatable district' as the neighbourhood:
-Canals, which allow ships to cross land. Multiple types here! Firstly the graphic: a city on a 1-tile isthmus will have a canal graphic added. Then there's the Canal district, which you can have multiple of in a city, and have them all connect up. Well, I say 'all'... they kind of imply you can only have two, and they have to be opposite each other around the city centre.
There's a Panama Canal wonder, which sounds like it's basically a place-anywhere canal district. The picture in both articles looks like it shows a 3-tile canal, being city centre - canal district - Panama (with a ship graphic in it). So the only way to make a canal more than 4 long is to have 2 cities with 3 tiles between them, and join them up with Panama.
-Dams. We already discussed dams back in Floods.
-Mountain Tunnels. No image of this, but pretty obviously it's a way to make a mountain passable. I would guess they're the same type of repeatable district, because the alternative is letting builders walk onto mountains, which would kind of ruin the point.
-Railways. Railways! These are shown running both inside and between cities, and definitely overlay on top of improvements. They look like they might be straight Road replacements, since I don't see any roads in the image that includes them. So probably not that exciting.
-Flood Barriers. Described as a 'new technology', but no word on whether it's something you actually build, an improvement to your dam, or a policy to put in place.
Conclusion: Sounds interesting! A lot of this is focussed on making moving armies around easier, which is a conscious effort to alleviate some of the complaints about movement.
World Congress
Non-functional in multiplayer, since your opponent won't care how many Diplomatic Cookies or whatever you have. They've moved the Emergencies system from R&F over here, and added a Diplo Victory: it basically consists of garnering points from victory votes and things like the World Games, the World Fair, and other competitions such as Disaster Relief (because that's really sensitive naming!).
You get Diplomatic Favour throughout the game, which you can use to influence the AI's votes. These include in Emergencies (when you don't want to do the stupid thing they're clamouring for), and on standard resolutions a la Civ 5.
Most interestingly, they've revamped Warmongering! Now it's Grievances, described as 'a tug-of-war between a pair of players'. That means that if you get attacked, the AIs will recognise that you've been wronged, and won't start hating you until they feel you've overstepped yourself in revenge.
Conclusion: The World Congress is hardly unexpected, and kind of take-or-leave. But the Grievances update sounds like it could make warfare actually viable without immediately descending into Everybody Hates Everybody territory.
Future Tech/Civics
Not much discussed, but they do mention (and show) the Seastead, which I guess is a water-based Neighbourhood. They also meantion carbon-capture tech, which sounds like a 'turn off Global Warming' switch to me.
One thing which sounds kinda fun is that the structure of the Future Tech trees is randomised at the start of the game. The big question is, is it randomised the same for all players? I'd hope so, but they don't say.
One thing they do say is that they've tried to make all the Victory Conditions take an extra 30-40 turns, so they all happen in the Future Era. Er... does that just mean 'we've made combat harder'? Because I can't see any other way to slow down the Domination victory.
Conclusion: I love me some Future Tech, but if they've made combat harder the AIs are going to be so utterly pointless.
New Leaders
8 civs, 9 leaders, including 'some fan favorites – with brand new twists'. I suspect the ninth leader will be for an existing civ, but not based on anything - just a hunch. As Japper says, Polynesia and the Inca show up in the trailer. They mention that some of them have interactions with the Global Warming & World Congress features, so I guess there's something about Polynesian islands in there.
New Scenarios
I'm... sure there are lots of people out there who play scenarios.
Other Content
"Seven new world wonders, seven natural wonders, 18 new units, 15 new improvements, 9 new buildings, 5 new districts, 2 new city sets, 9 new techs and 10 new civics have been added." A lot of this has already been covered: the techs and civics are probably Future Era, we've mentioned at least four districts, and the new civs bring a dose of everything with them. But hey, new wonders, that's always fun.
Improved Gameplay Systems
They've added stuff to espionage (it's going to be Steal DiploCookies, isn't it?), revamped Science and Culture victories (which suggests they haven't changed combat - phew!), added new Historic Moments (er... I don't know R&F), and 'some other stuff'. I guess that's... fine?
Overall thoughts
This is a heavily Single Player expansion - too much randomness for most of the systems to work in MP. But given that they just released the game for a console without online MP at all, I think we all knew that's where their focus lies.
I think the changes will open up a lot of variation in games - and dare one say it, variants? Something like 'play as Egypt, plant cities only on river banks, never build flood controls' could be interesting, as could a passive-aggressive 'your score is based on the number of grievances you have towards everyone else combined, minus any grievances they have against you'.
I don't know how it'll interact with R&F, but there's a definite possibility of 'oh gods NOW what' moments, when you get hit with a joint war declaration, in a dark age, while recovering from a flood, while a storm is coming down from the north, and hey, isn't the local volcano looking restless...?
hS
)
